


Circumstellar Gravity or: Ozzie Graham’s Interstellar Road Trip

by abstractconcept



Category: People of Earth (TV 2016)
Genre: Aliens Made Them Do It, Drunken Kissing, Humor, Interstellar Road Trip, M/M, Mating Rituals, Road Trip, Seven Minutes in Outer Space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 05:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abstractconcept/pseuds/abstractconcept
Summary: There are worse things than being stuck on a dilapidated spaceship with a couple of asshole aliens and a malfunctioning robot. Like being stuck on a dilapidated spaceship with a couple of asshole aliens, a malfunctioning robot, and Jonathan Walsh in all his schmoozing, goofy, exasperating glory. Still, itisa spaceship, and thereareactual aliens and robots, and there may be more to Jonathan Walsh than Ozzie imagined.





	Circumstellar Gravity or: Ozzie Graham’s Interstellar Road Trip

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glitterpig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitterpig/gifts).



> Glitterpig, I am SO sorry I failed Yuletide. I lost my job and sort of spiraled. But I adored all your prompts and I had a story started, I just couldn't work up the self-esteem to even look at it again for awhile. I hope you got stories you liked despite my assholery. I know the show's been off the air for awhile, but if you still miss it the way I do, I hope you enjoy this fic.
> 
> A/N about references: I stuffed in as many cameo references to aliens and space movies/shows/books as I could. I’d cite them, but I can’t even remember them all.
> 
> Thank you to my beta, Adele_Sparks. BFFs forever!

Ozzie woke with a gasp. There was a blurry, bulbous _thing_ floating above him. He blinked rapidly and the _thing_ coalesced into a big grey head with monstrous black eyes. 

Ozzie screamed, which seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

The grey-headed _thing_ screamed, jumping back and clutching its chest.

Ozzie screamed again.

The grey-headed thing screamed again.

Ozzie made to scream, then paused. Was this going to go on all day? Maybe he should try . . . like . . . _not_ screaming? Just to change things up?

Then there was a whooshing sound, and someone else came careering into the room. “Jeff! What did you _do?_ I thought you were going to help him, not—not whatever this is!” 

Ozzie blinked. “Walsh?” His voice sounded weak and croaky, like he was a rusty machine. Jonathan Walsh was standing there looking wild, wearing some . . . some newfangled outfit that was way less hip than his usual fare. Everything behind him was white—well, a _grubby_ sort of white—and well-lit and . . . vaguely familiar.

“Me? What did _I_ do!?” the grey-headed monster squawked. “Ask him! He’s the one that started screaming for no reason!”

Ozzie shot up, still gasping. “What happened? Where am I?” He patted his hands over his body. “He shot me. Didn’t he?” 

Jonathan wasn’t paying attention. “You shouldn’t have gotten so close to him,” he was telling the grey monster. “You scared him. If I woke up and the first thing I saw was your big, ugly face, I’d scream, too!”

“That’s gratitude, for you! That’s real nice, Walsh! I just brought your pet Earthling back to life, that’s what I did.”

“All right, all right.” Jonathan smoothed his hair. He seemed to be calming down. “Ozzie, are you okay? What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Being shot,” Ozzie blurted. “And then Alex was there and I was trying to tell her . . .”

“Well, you’re okay now,” Jonathan told him, sounding shaken. He smiled widely. “No harm done, right? You’re okay, buddy. You know what would fix you right up? A raw liver tumeric smoothie. What do you say? Mmmmmm, right?”

Walsh’s patronizing tone did more to make Ozzie feel back to normal than anything else probably could. He looked from the little monster to Jonathan and back. “And you’re . . . another alien?” He’d done his best to choose words that _didn’t_ sound like, _Oh good God, what the hell ARE you?_ but apparently he’d done less well at mastering his expression, because the other alien, if that’s what it was, looked offended.

“Hey, I saved your _life,_ pal!” the grey thing snarled, jabbing a finger at his chest. “Don’t you sit there looking at me like I’m some sort of . . . some sort of short, ugly weirdo. _You’re_ the weirdo. Look at you—all that squishy human flesh. Hey, you know, you owe me your life. You do. You think about that, okay, jackass?”

“Jeff—Jeff—that’s enough,” Jonathan broke in. He wiped a hand over his face and let out a long breath. “Hey, you did _good_. You did it! You brought Ozzie back from the dead! I still don’t quite understand how, but—”

“I was _dead?_ ” Ozzie yelped.

“Yeah, and if it weren’t for me you’d _still_ be dead, and don’t you _forget_ it,” Jeff told him, and then marched out of the room, still grumbling. The door opened for him with a whoosh and then closed behind him.

Jonathan’s smile was huge. He held out his arms. “Ozzie! Champ! How ya feelin? Can I get a hug?”

“Look—I—” Before Ozzie could protest, Walsh wrapped him up in a big hug and was squeezing tightly. “Yeah. Thanks,” Ozzie managed. “I’d rather have a doctor give me a once-over, but hugs are good. Yeah,” he repeated as Jonathan finally let him go, still beaming. He pulled away and got up from the . . . bed? Gurney? Container? He didn’t know what to call the thing. It seemed like a mix of all those things. He gave the room a long look. Everything was white, but kind of dingy, and some of the lights flickered occasionally. “Where am I?”

“Well, you’re on a spaceship.”

Ozzie goggled. “You’re—you’re serious? I’m on a spaceship?”

“Yeah. How ‘bout that? A real, live spaceship.” Walsh sure was being chipper. Of course, that was standard procedure for Walsh. “Want the grand tour?”

Ozzie slowly shifted his weight. His legs were a bit wobbly, but not too bad, considering the whole “previously dead” thing. He followed Jonathan out of the room into a hallway. Everything was _still_ white. “I feel like I’m in a giant ipod,” he mumbled. 

“Yeah? Do ipods have these?” Walsh led him to a wall and pressed a button. A glossy white panel slid back to reveal the stars.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Pretty neat, huh?”

“Holy _shit._ ” Ozzie pressed his nose to the glass—if it _was_ glass. In addition to the spattering of stars, he could see a scintillating sheen of prismatic _something_ off to the right. It coruscated slowly, like an oil slick, turning from sapphire to raspberry to emerald. “What is _that?_ ”

“That?” Jonathan joined him, looking over his shoulder. “Oh, that’s the barrier. That’s where we’re headed. Everything outside of it, like where we are, is no man’s land.” He sounded slightly wistful. “That, right there, is civilization.”

“Look at all those _colors_.” Ozzie stared for a long minute. “It’s—it’s beautiful.” 

Walsh did a double-take. “Well, yeah. Sort of. It’s actually toxic and the environmentally-conscious Whites went ape-shit when they put it up, but. It’s real effective at what it does. And, well. Yeah. I mean, now that you mention it, I guess it is.” They stood side by side for a few minutes, staring. Then Jonathan turned. “I guess I never really noticed.” He was looking at Ozzie with a funny smile on his face. 

For some reason, Ozzie’s face was starting to feel warm.

“I’ll show you the break room,” Jonathan said. “We can get you a smoothie or something. That’ll help.” He was still grinning.

“Jonathan . . . what happened to the guy who shot me?”

All of a sudden Walsh looked less certain, and a whole lot less chipper. His eyebrows lowered into a glower. “You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

Ozzie nodded slowly. “How long was I . . . out?”

Now Jonathan looked downright grim. “Almost six months.”

“Six _months?_ How could I be . . . _you_ know, for six whole months?”

Walsh sighed. “Trust me, it’s a _really_ long story. Let’s go get some food into you and have Jeff look you over before we get into that.”

oOoOoOoOo

Jeff, the short, weird alien, told Ozzie he’d be just fine. Well, what he’d actually said was, “What the fuck do I look like, a veterinarian? He’s standing up. He’s breathing. He only has one heart, the poor schmuck, but it’s beating. What more do you want from me?”

That seemed like as much of a diagnosis as Ozzie was going to get, so Jonathan suggested they all eat something. 

Dinner, however, was an awkward affair. 

Jonathan made introductions—if you could call them that. “This is Kurt, who also used to be dead—and you know Nancy, of course.”

“Hello, Ozzie. How are you feeling?”

“Hey, Nancy. I’m . . .” Ozzie trailed off, staring. “I think I’m doing better than you,” he muttered. “Uh, are her eyes supposed to do that?”

Jonathan took his arm. “Don’t use up too much of her CPU, okay? The ship was damaged in the fight to escape and she’s basically our only working navigational tool.” He patted Ozzie’s arm.

Ozzie didn’t even notice. He was too busy gaping. Nancy was a robot! That explained so much! Ozzie raised his eyebrows. “That’s a lot to unpack. Can you elaborate?”

“Dinner first,” Walsh told him. He made Ozzie sit down and handed out plates of food.

“Kur . . . Walsh, would you please pass the fries?” 

Jonathan Walsh heaved a sigh and passed some fries to the grey alien—Jeff. The idea of a thing like that being named Jeff was going to take some getting used to. 

The break room was as unimpressive as anything on Earth. It had a coffee machine (or it looked like a coffee machine), a small refrigerator, several weird alien appliances, a vending machine, and a wobbly little table with sturdy chairs. 

They all sat down and looked at each other uncomfortably. Well, apart from Nancy. Nancy was busy doing something navigational, as far as Ozzie could tell. She was standing in one corner, buzzing slightly, eyes wide and white and terrifying. 

Ozzie looked at the grey alien on his right, the Reptilian across from him, and then Jonathan Walsh, on his left. They were eating . . . well, they seemed to be eating White Castle. Walsh was wolfing his food down with apparent gusto, but the others didn’t seem as enthused.

“So you’re . . . uh, you’re aliens, huh?” Ozzie said. 

The grey alien merely grunted. 

“Yeah,” the Reptilian said. He waited until Ozzie went to take a bite, and yelled, “BOO!” Ozzie dropped the burger and the Reptilian laughed heartily. “Good one, right, Walsh?” he said. Jeff was snickering too.

Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Kurt. Hilarious.”

Ozzie tried to keep them straight: the Reptilian was apparently Kurt, and the bulbous grey alien was Jeff. Jonathan was still wearing his human skin, which made Ozzie feel a bit more at ease. 

“Do you guys always eat White Castle?” Ozzie asked, prodding at a slider with his finger. It seemed normal. Well, normal food for a teenage pothead, anyway. There wasn’t anything particularly _alien_ about it, at any rate.

“That was _his_ idea,” Kurt said, jerking a thumb at Walsh. 

“He’s _addicted,_ ” Jeff added. “Ever since he tried Earth junk he reprogrammed the food-mo-tron to make this . . . this _stuff._ ”

Kurt snorted. “It’s disgusting.”

“Yeah!” Jeff agreed. He and Kurt looked at each other, then looked away quickly. Everyone went back to eating in silence.

A few minutes later, they both reached for another burger at the same time, accidentally touched hands, squawked, and jumped back, flustered. 

“Are you guys okay?” Ozzie looked at them. Was this normal alien behavior? They seemed jumpy.

“Us? I’m _fine,_ ” Jeff said. 

“What, you’ve never seen someone eat before?” Kurt asked belligerently. 

Walsh gave Ozzie a sideways look and shook his head ever so slightly. 

Later, Walsh showed Ozzie to his room. “Is this where you people _sleep?_ ” He knew bums living in cardboard boxes with more square footage.

“Now you know why I preferred Earth,” Jonathan told him wryly.

There was a small bed, which Ozzie sat on. “What happened to Starcrossed?”

“They’re . . . fine, Ozzie.” Jonathan ran a hand through his hair, looking pained. “Could we do this later? I have a raging . . . thing. In my head. It, like, _hurts_.”

“A headache? You have a headache?”

“Oh, God, is that what it is? That thing you Earthlings have all the Tylenol commercials for? It feels like my brain is too big for my skull.”

“Great.” Ozzie couldn’t tell if he was really in pain or just deflecting, but he doubt he’d get much more of anything from Walsh at the moment. “What’s with your, uh, friends? Or is that classified, too?”

Jonathan sighed. “No. And nothing is _classified_ , it’s just complicated. Everything’s complicated.” He sat next to Ozzie on the bed. 

It made Ozzie uncomfortable, since the bed was hardly big enough for one person to be comfortable, let alone two, but Jonathan Walsh never had seemed interested in respecting other people’s personal space. Still, he gave the guy a dirty look, just on principal.

“Okay. You really wanna know what their problem is? They have a _thing._ ”

“A thing,” Ozzie repeatedly flatly.

“Yeah. You know. An unspoken _thing_. An infatuation. For each other.”

Ozzie’s forehead wrinkled. “Uh. Okay. Really?”

“If you want the truth, that’s why I brought you back to life. At least, that’s why I brought you back to life now. I could have waited until we were closer to the Hub, but frankly, they’re getting on my last nerve. All these goo-goo eyes and embarrassed silences . . . this is why I don’t fuck co-workers.” He flung himself back, lying across Ozzie’s bed with his arms crossed behind his head.

“Wait a minute, you _brought me back from the dead_ because two guys you know were playing footsie or something?” Ozzie rubbed his temples. 

Jonathan heaved a sigh. “I just needed someone _sane_ to talk to.”’

Ozzie stared at him. He was dead—well, he’d _been_ dead—and aliens were trying to take over his planet, and somehow he was in outer space hurtling toward something he didn’t understand, and he didn’t understand why _any_ of this was happening, and Jonathan expected him to be the sane one to talk to? “Look, Walsh, I don’t even know where we _are._ I don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t know what’s happening to my friends. And you woke me up so you could have someone to talk to about your annoying co-workers?”

“You just give it a couple of weeks,” Jonathan told him darkly. “Trust me, it’ll get old for you, too.” He shook his head. “They just keep dancing around each other, acting all weird. One minute they’re ignoring each other, then they’re talking over each other, then they’re trying to push each other’s buttons. I don’t get it.”

Ozzie shrugged. “Well, yeah, pushing someone’s buttons because you like them is generally considered a pretty useless flirting technique, as everyone outside of second grade knows.”

Jonathan gave him strange look. “What does that mean?”

Ozzie tilted his head. “What do you mean, what does that mean? Look—never mind. What happened to Starcrossed? Where are we? What’s going on?”

Jonathan sat up, looking shifty. “You know what? I’m gonna let you get settled in. I have to go check on Nancy.”

“Jonathan—”

Walsh held up a finger. He put his wrist to his ear. “Got it. Got it. I’ll be right there.”

“You aren’t even wearing a watch!” Ozzie called after him as he escaped. “I know you were just talking to your hand, Walsh!” Ozzie sighed. Still, being left alone wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Jonathan was annoying at the best of times. Besides, now he’d be able to snoop like the intrepid reporter he still intended to be.

Ozzie’s room reminded him of something on a submarine. He felt claustrophobic unless he left the door propped open to remind him there was more air out in the corridor if he needed it. 

After he jammed a small container—a trashbin, maybe?—in the doorway, Ozzie turned in a circle. There was barely enough room for that, even.

There was a sort of closet . . . or a panel, really, that, depending on the button he pushed, opened to display a white pair of trousers, or a white jacket with a Mandarin-like collar. Even if Ozzie had wanted to wear the outfit—which he didn’t, considering he’d look like a wannabe cult-leader—it wouldn’t have fit him, being made for someone rather taller. There was also a small box-like container with a couple of drawers beside the bed. One drawer held some funky, two-part necklaces, a hairbrush with soft bristles and a number of socks. The other drawer had several pairs of shiny underwear and an electronic thing that looked a bit like a cassette tape with the words “DON’S SECRET DIARY” printed on the outside. 

“Not much of a secret, Don,” Ozzie muttered. He sat down on the bed and fiddled with the thing, turning tiny knobs and pressing itty-bitty buttons until something happened. A glowing light projected an image in front of him. It was a . . . man, sort of, dressed all in white, with long white hair. “Guys,” he said in what seemed like a thick Norse-type of accent, “I am having second thoughts about this mission. I really mean it. My tests all indicate that humans have been miscatagorized on the Pösmunk-Fåntratt Scale. I mean, when you poke them, they say, ‘Ouch.’ They wrote this really moving play about how social bonds are the key to overcoming obstacles; I think it was called ‘The Goonies.’ They have this thing called ‘music’ and it’s wonderful. It’s this rhythmic combination of sounds they use to express themselves that somehow produces this profound emotional reaction in them. And they have invented ‘hip hop’ and it is both a musical genre _and_ a kind of dance. Guys, seriously. I think we might be making a major mistake. Uh-oh. Here comes Kurt.” In a voice that suddenly got louder, he added, “And that is why I always cry when I receive knitted socks from my maternal forebearer. Because it is just so—so . . . uh, so _touching_. And after all she has gone through, it is so meaningful to me—” the man appeared to be tearing up. His eyes were actually glistening.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Don, are you blubbering over your dead grandmother again?” A green face popped up over Don’s shoulder. “You know what happened to my grandmother? I _ate_ her. You and your stupid emo crap.”

Jeff, out of frame, began cackling and added, “I can’t believe you _record_ this shit. I don’t know how you can stand listening to yourself the _first time!”_

Jeff and Kurt’s laughter faded into the distance as they went to find something better to do, and Don put a finger to his lips. After waiting a few minutes, he said, “Transmission to be sent to White Overseers in one hour.” The hologram dissipated. 

Hmm. So had the message been transmitted? Did that mean the aliens were in the process of—or had changed their minds about conquering Earth? It was, after all, only one guy, and Jeff and Kurt obviously still didn’t think much of humans. Where did Jonathan stand on all of this? Ozzie knew if he asked, he’d probably get the run around again, or more excuses. Still . . . there was some small part of him that was glad Walsh, at least, seemed to be on their side. As provoking as the guy was, he was also the closest thing Ozzie had to an actual friend, at least, on the ship. 

Ozzie turned the tiny recorder over and over in his hands. “Well, _that_ was educational,” he remarked to the empty room. 

__

oOoOoOo

It took way less than a couple of weeks to get sick of Kurt and Jeff’s stupid dance. Every time they interacted, they had to outdo each other, full of bravado, pretending they didn’t care. They kept exclaiming, in loud voices, that they found each other ugly, or obnoxious, or smelly.

It was like living with school kids.

Only a couple of days into the trip, Ozzie found himself exploring the ship, trying to figure out what everything was. There was a weird, arrhythmic sound around the corner, like an off-balance washing machine. Ozzie hunted it down and found what looked like a storage room. Jeff was there, jumping up and down, trying to reach something on a high shelf. 

What was weird was that Kurt was there too, acting like he didn’t even see Jeff. Still, his jaw was set (or seemed to be, under the scales), and he was glaring at nothing, and he didn’t even seem to have any reason to be there. It was like he was just there to pointedly _not_ assist Jeff in any way.

“Uh . . . you want some help with that?” Ozzie asked, coming up from behind Jeff, who whirled around and gaped at him. Ozzie reached up and grabbed the thing on the high shelf, which looked like a cross between a blowdryer and a radar gun. He presented it to Jeff, who looked like someone had offered to spit in his dinner. 

“Some help? Some _help?_ What the fuck are you, the helpers union? Get lost!”

Ozzie backed away, his forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Uh . . . okay.”

Jeff turned to Kurt, his voice climbing with every word. “He thinks I need his help! Can you believe it!?”

“The fucking nerve these humans have!” Kurt sounded just as disgusted. Ozzie stood there, blinking. “Like, _handing_ you things? _Really?_ ”

“What the hell is your problem?” Ozzie demanded. 

Jeff and Kurt acted like he wasn’t even there. “He’s worse than Don,” Jeff grumped.

Kurt snorted. “Right? Walking around here, _handing_ people things. He’s probably _covered_ in human diseases and stuff.”

“It’s like he thinks he’s just one of the guys!” Jeff wrinkled his nose. “Standing there on his wimpy human feet, looking at us with his stupid Earthling eyes . . . he probably doesn’t even have a squeedlyspooch, and he has the gall to hand me the Disinfectinator.”

“And now we have to figure out a way to disinfect the Disinfectinator without touching it!” Kurt added. 

“This is all Walsh’s fault,” Jeff muttered, digging through another receptacle. 

“Hey, you wanna help, human?” Kurt said, turning on Ozzie. He reached into a receptacle and pulled out a random object. He hurled it and Ozzie ducked, and the thing missed him, flying over his shoulder. “Go fetch,” Kurt suggested. Jeff started to laugh.

Ozzie chucked the disinfector back at Jeff, causing him to yelp. “Fine, whatever,” he said, and stomped away. 

The aliens continued to bitch loudly as Ozzie left. “I can’t fucking believe this. We’re in the middle of hostile territory on a ship that’s made for _orbit_ and we’re puttering along at about ten miles astro-units an hour and we’re stuck with _that_ guy! What a crock!” Jeff complained. 

“Yeah, you’re telling me. Like we don’t have enough going on, with the Cuben invasion to worry about. Now we have to clean up Earthling poop and feed the damn thing!”

Ozzie’s footsteps slowed. Cuban invasion? Were they talking, like . . . Castro or something? And they were in hostile territory? On a ship that wasn’t supposed to travel through space? What the hell was going on? Ozzie frowned. It was time to get some answers.

oOoOoOo

Ozzie cornered Walsh that night, in Jonathan’s own bedroom, on Jonathan’s own bed, and demanded to know what was happening on Earth. He didn’t even have to threaten violence. He just kept inching closer and raising his voice, even clambering up on the bed, and Walsh seemed to get more and more flustered and sputtering things that sounded like answers, even if they were still pretty puzzling at first.

He’d backed Walsh into a corner, literally, where the bed was crammed in, because the sleeping quarters were so pitiful, and for some reason, being on a bed with Ozzie looming over him, arms out to make sure he couldn’t get away, achieved what days of whining and demanding hadn’t.

“Whoa—whoa—what exactly are you going to do if I don’t talk? Kiss me?” Walsh joked. 

“Maybe,” Ozzie threatened. “I happen to know the Disinfector-thingie is out of commission. Maybe I’ll just get my horrible human germs _all over you._ ”

Jonathan tugged at his collar, looking uncomfortable, and yet, Ozzie could swear he was trying not to smile. “You do know I was actually an Earth worker for a long time, right? I’m not afraid of Earth germs, buddy.”

“Then why are you squirming?”

“I . . . fine, just back up, okay? I’ll tell you everything.”

There had been _another_ faction of aliens on Earth—the Cubes—only they weren’t after Earth or the humans. They didn’t really care about all that. They were interested in infiltrating the _Reptilians_ , and since the Reptilians had such a presence on Earth, they’d chosen that circuitous route to domination.

“Like I said, it’s complicated,” Jonathan said, trying to placate Ozzie. 

“Keep talking.” With Walsh in the corner, Ozzie crossed his arms and looked down sternly, even though he didn’t have the slightest idea of what he’d do if Walsh actually refused to talk.

But Jonathan Walsh threw up his hands. “Well, okay. See, Eric kidnapped Starcrossed.” At the bloom of panic rising on Ozzie’s face, he added, “They’re fine! They’re back on Earth. Unfortunately, so is Eric.” Jonathan tilted his head back, leaning against the headboard and staring at the ceiling. 

“Eric? Who’s Eric?”

“Eric’s a Cube. At first I assumed his species came to Earth planning to enslave it.” He stopped and looked at Ozzie.

Ozzie raised his eyebrows. “So . . . not unlike your own plans.”

Jonathan nodded, even though he looked just a _little_ ashamed. “Yes. I mean, well. Except we had permits.”

“You—what?”

“You can’t just go around destroying civilizations, Ozzie. There are lots of other intelligent beings out there, and if you just sort of enslave whoever you feel like, they’ll worry they’re going to be next, so there’s a lot of paperwork, alliances, agreements and that sort of thing before you can even get started.”

“Oh, good. I’d hate to think of the wrong people getting enslaved,” Ozzie remarked bitterly.

Walsh jabbed him in the chest with a finger. “Look, Ozzie, the point is, the Cubes are basically rogue. They’re out there taking over _everything._ ” He lowered his voice. “We think they may have already got the Greys. As far as we can tell, their modus operandi is to isolate a species to the best of their ability, and then obliterate it.”

Ozzie shuddered. There was something disconcerting about discovering there were aliens with a plan to take over Earth—and then discovering there were even bigger, badder aliens out there, aliens with possibly even less scruples. He bit his lip.

“But while they might have already got to the Greys, but the Reptilians aren’t so easy to fuck with,” Jonathan explained, full of false bravado. “The Greys are smart, but essentially weak. I mean, physically. I mean, you punch one, they go down.” 

Ozzie was busy thinking all of this over. “Okay, so there are four different kinds of aliens—”

“On Earth, anyway,” Jonathan agreed. “And you see, there was this big event coming up.”

“What kind of event?”

“It’s, uh, kind of hard to explain--Xorthilian Eth Tharissius--I guess you’d say . . . Prince Xorth? Prince Tharissius? Only he’s more of a commander? He’s sort of a big deal. Sort of second-in-command among our race, next in line for the . . . look, it’s not a _throne_ , but it’s sort of a position . . . but kind of not. It’s hard to explain.”

“Could you get to the point, maybe? I don’t care about Reptilian politics. What happened to Gina? What happened to Gerry? Where are my . . . my _friends?_ ” Ozzie wanted to know. 

“They’re safe. Or at least they were.” Jonathan squirmed. “Could you back off a _little?_ ” He was flushed and fidgety, which was interesting. In Ozzie’s experience, Jonathan Walsh didn’t _do_ flustered. 

Ozzie relented, sitting back on his haunches and looming a little less. “Go on.”

“Our, like, _Vice President_ made a trip to Earth to get a look at our progress. That’s when the Cubes attacked. They couldn’t take the Reptilians head-on, but he’d make a hell of a hostage, and in the meantime . . . Ozzie, do you know the planet with the largest Reptilian population outside of _Snbibyar?_ ” 

“Is that the word for Reptile World?”

“Ozzie, Jungle Bob’s Reptile World is that place out of Selden, New York that sells pythons and snakes and things. Snbibyar is my home planet.”

“What would I know about the exports and populations of . . . Airbnb or whatever?” Ozzie retorted. 

“ _Snbibyar_. And the planet with the largest populations of Reptilians outside of the homeworld is _Earth_ , Ozzie. They could wipe out nearly a third of our species.”

“What—how?”

“It’s a big operation,” Jonathan said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I told you, we’ve been among you a long time.”

“So, wait, what exactly is happening back on Earth?” Ozzie’s voice was getting shrill. “Cube people are attacking the lizard people, who are attacking the _people_ -people? Who’s winning?”

“No, the Reptilians aren’t attacking _anyone_. They joined forces with the humans, and they’re all trying to fight the Cubes. But it isn’t going so great, which is where I come in. Alex, Gina, Gerry, Sharon and the others are leading the resistance. You and I are going for backup.”

Ozzie blinked. “You and I are—wait, who’s _Sharon?_ ”

“She’s the F.B.I. Agent’s mother. She’s actually _really_ good. She’s been preparing for this for a long time.”

Ozzie shook his head. “So what’s this about our going for help? Are we going to Reptile World?”

Walsh looked annoyed. “I told you, it’s _not_ ‘Reptile World.’ And no. It’s too far, and our communications equipment is compromised. This ship took a lot of damage when we broke through the Cube’s barricade just outside the earth’s atmosphere. Our best bet is to request the help of the Whites.”

“The Whites?”

Walsh sighed. “You never met Don. Don’s a White and . . . Look, we have an alliance with the Whites, and anyway, they’re kind of pushovers for a sob story. They’ll pass word on to the Reptilians and if we’re lucky, they may be able to help in other ways.”

“Don,” Ozzie repeated, thinking about the secret diary, such as it was. He wondered if he should mention it to Jonathan, but decided to keep that to himself for now. “Where is he?”

“There was a little . . . predicament that needed his attention.”

“Like what?”

“He may have gotten one of your group, um, pregnant.”

“Which one?” Ozzie blinked a little.

“Chelsea.”

“So much for stealing ovaries,” Ozzie remarked. “Wait, wait—Don’s the White, right? Is he nine feet tall and looks like Ryan Gosling?” That didn’t exactly match the dude on the hologram, but that was the alien Chelsea and Kelly both described.

“What? _No!_ I mean, maybe if you _squint_ , but—”

“Okay, okay. Not important.” At least Don had put the word out that humans weren’t all bad. If his ‘diary’ had been transmitted to the rest of the Whites, then maybe they were already gearing up to help Earth. “Are the Whites at the thing you showed me from the window? The Hub?”

“No, but we have to get through the Hub to get to the Whites.”

“Why can’t we get to the Hub and send a message to the Reptilians from there? Don’t they have communications equipment, or whatever?”

“Yes, but . . . well, the Reptilians are not the most popular race in the galaxy. Sure, we’re charming, but we have this tendency to, uh, overthrow and subjugate anyone we think is weaker and less-deserving than we are. And, well, we think pretty much everyone is weaker and less-deserving than we are. So it’s a dicey prospect to use unsecured equipment to transmit news that our race is in trouble.”

“Ah-ha!” Ozzie pointed a finger in Jonathan’s face. “So the hunter becomes the hunted.”

Jonathan scowled. 

“Come on. Admit it. It’s not like you don’t deserve it.”

Jonathan winced. “Okay, fine. Maybe we did. Maybe we do. But we’re the only people in the whole fucking galaxy that might be able to save your ass while we’re saving our own.”

Ozzie sighed. He turned around, his knees aching a bit, and repositioned himself so he was sitting on the side of Jonathan’s bed instead of sort of crouching over Jonathan. “Okay. So what’s all this I hear about us being in hostile territory in a ship that’s not fit for scrap?”

Jonathan rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t want to scare you. So what if the ship wasn’t built for it? It’s going, right? And we haven’t had any trouble, right? Don’t worry so much.”

Suddenly, there was a blaring alarm, and Ozzie jolted. He jumped to his feet. “What was that?”

“We’re docking.”

Jeff’s voice came over a loudspeaker. “We’re stopping for fuel. If anyone wants snacks, you’d better get ‘em yourself. I don’t know if they make human chow here, but I’m sure not going to get caught buying it.”

Ozzie looked at Jonathan. “So we’re, like, at an interstellar gas station?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

oOoOoOoOo

“You know how offensive it is to put a black guy on a leash?” Ozzie said, glaring at Jonathan.

“Hey, I had nothing to do with any of Earth’s fucked up history in that regard,” Walsh protested. “Don’t get pissed at me. I didn’t enslave you guys.”

“ _Yet,_ ” Ozzie retorted.

Walsh groaned. He had taken off his human suit, and the whole thing was almost too much for Ozzie. This was very creepy, and getting weirder by the minute. Walsh didn’t seem to notice. “Look, I can’t get caught letting an unlicensed life-form go waltzing around outside of captivity. I could get arrested, and then _everyone you know will die._ ” The man—well, _Reptilian_ \--looked grim, and Ozzie swallowed hard, picturing the group, helpless. Gina. Gerry. Yvonne. Kelly. Chelsea. Even Richard. They were counting on him. 

Ozzie looked out of the docking bay. The building itself, the fueling station, was hundreds of feet tall, and had all these twisty metal tubes coming out of it, but down at the bottom it was a big old cube of glass--or possibly of screens. All sorts of alien words and pictures kept flashing across them, and Ozzie wished he could read them. “What’s it saying?” he couldn’t help but ask, nodding at the glowing red words.

“Huh?” Jonathan turned around. “Oh. _Buy XyxUwwwxvqxqv here, 50% off._ ”

“What’s—what’s xyrrr-whatever?”

“XyxUwwwxvqxqv. It’s a kind of alcohol.”

“Alcohol? Aliens drink alcohol?”

“Yeah. Maybe I’ll buy some. There’s an idea.” Jonathan looked around again. Kurt was waving for him to follow. “You _could_ just stay here, you know.”

Ozzie knew it would be safer, but what journalist could pass this up? To see whatever there was out there? What a fucking scoop. The first human being to set foot on—on wherever this was! New life forms! New cultures! New energy sources—maybe he’d even learn something that could benefit all of mankind. “No, I’m coming,” he said firmly, taking a deep breath. 

“Great. Hurry up.” When they caught up with the others, Walsh gave the leash to Jeff. “Here, hold this for me,” he said, before disappearing inside and heading up a set of stairs to the left. 

Both Jeff and Ozzie were left spluttering protestations. 

“Where is he _going?_ ” Ozzie squawked. 

“Dammit. Who knows? He’s probably got to use the toilet or something. And now I’m stuck with you!” Jeff jerked the leash.

“Hey, don’t do that!” Ozzie jerked back, almost yanking Jeff off his feet.

“Stop it! Do you want to go in or not? Come on!” 

The inside of the space station was brightly lit, but grungy. There were only a few other . . . well, other _beings_ inside. One was almost fifteen feet tall and looked like a giant jello mold. It had a number of tiny tentacles at the bottom, wiggling about and making the floor sticky.

“Whoa,” Ozzie managed, goggling at the gelatinous monster. “What is that?” he added, almost under his breath.

Jeff yanked on the leash again, his voice a high whine. “It’s called a domesticated dono. What, you want to sniff its butt or something?” He tried to walk away, but Ozzie was rooted in place, fascinated by this new life-form, trying to commit every detail to memory so he’d be able to write it down later. He was already starting to write copy in his head. _It seemed like a gentle creature,_ he wrote mentally, _and there was no doubt it was intelligent. It moved toward me, and I steeled myself for this, the first deliberate encounter with an alien being. It seemed curious about me, and I wondered what knowledge I could offer this fellow life form._

Then, something seemed to happen inside the glutinous creature. Ozzie remembered his aunt serving fruit-filled jelled desserts at summer picnics, and this reminded him powerfully of those. Ozzie blinked. Something was happening—inside the blob. Deep inside, something . . . _coalesced_ , until it looked like someone had dropped an entire orange in the jello.

The orange blinked. Ozzie started, then blinked back. It was an _eye_ , and it was coming closer. It pushed its way to the surface of the gel until Ozzie worried it would pop out altogether; however, the gel itself _also_ pushed out, until it was forming a sort of head with an eye, a long snout, and what almost seemed to be droopy ears. It wobbled dangerously above Ozzie, stretching toward him. Something formed at the very tip of its newly-formed extremity, a pebbled, triangular thing poking out at him. It made Ozzie think of a nose.

“Why, hey there, buddy,” Ozzie said soothingly. He reached up a hand to allow the alien to examine it. The cold, wet thing prodded at his palm a couple of times. Then the eye blinked. It squinched up. Then—

BLAAAAAT. 

Ozzie stood there in horror, dripping with goo. The jelly creature slid away as quickly as its tentacles would let it. 

“ZOARX ZOARX M’PHOG BLUT!” a booming voice berated. Ozzie couldn’t find the source of the angry noise. 

“Snoxa flaxu ithigil borx ableet, j’joa zeep yoop,” Jeff whined, gesturing at Ozzie. He was looking down, and Ozzie followed his gaze. 

The jelly-thing was being followed by a phosphorescent gnome-like creature about the size of a pack of cigarettes. They were connected by a piece of string. “What it that? What’s he saying? Is he mad at me? Why is he yelling?” Ozzie hissed. 

Another alien glided toward them. It was iridescent, slightly transparent and somehow ethereal, but other than that, humanoid. It was beautiful. Despite himself, Ozzie was tearing up. This was what he’d hoped to encounter. This was man’s great moment of reaching out, communicating. It had shaggy, glowy bangs that covered its eyes, and patchy, glimmering stubble. It was wearing a cheap blue vest and had a name tag that read, “Steve.” It also had a voice like a trombone. “Wha whaa whaaa?” it inquired. “Awha wha whaaaaaaaaa.”

Ozzie blinked. “Hey, uh, hello. I come in peace.”

“Waaaaaaa _aaaaaa_ aaaa,” the thing replied, waving a transparent appendage in the universal signal of _not my problem_.

Jeff made obsequious explanations and apologies, and eventually the thing went away, deciding this was all above its paygrade. “Dumbass!” Jeff hissed at Ozzie. “Keep your hands to yourself or I’ll chain you up outside!”

“What did I do?”

“You went and touched that guy’s seeing eye blob!” Jeff growled. “Just keep your ugly human hands to yourself before you get us both in trouble!”

“What was that?” Ozzie said, nodding toward the thing called “Steve.”

“Huh? Oh, a Krell. Maybe. I don’t know if Krells have hatchlings that drop out of midpoint school to work at ∑-11, but it looked like a Krell to me.”

Ozzie was already distracted by the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen—a stack of shelves surrounded by a scintillating halo of silvery light. “Whoa—what’s that?” He moved toward the rack filled with things in cellophane wrappers, dragging Jeff with him.

“Stop yanking! It’s an endcap with truck stop food.” Jeff heaved a sigh. 

“Yeah? What are these?” Ozzie plucked one package of little brown spheres off the top shelf. They looked like candy-covered raisins.

“Chocolate.”

“Yeah?” Ozzie looked up hopefully. 

“Well, that’s the bit I can translate. It’s _Shifudsngh_ covered in chocolate. They’re like . . . well, they’re sort of like bugs. Bugs are a thing on Earth, right? And then the center is liquid methane.”

“So that’s a no for me,” Ozzie mumbled, putting it back. 

Jeff sighed. He looked around furtively, but no one was paying them any attention. “Okay, food for the Earthling. Let me think.” He began looking through the selection, flipping packages and reading the ingredients out loud. “Processed cheese . . . corn syrup . . . sulphuric acid . . . you eat sulphuric acid, right?”

“What? _No_ , I can’t eat sulphuric acid.”

“Huh. Okay, okay. What about gluten? Earthlings are allergic to gluten, right?”

“No, I’m fine with gluten.”

“Good to know.”

They ended up with an armful of junk, mostly various protein cubes, fizzy drinks, and, improbably, a package of Slim Jims. Ozzie recognized the dude on the canister with the mustache. He wondered how it got there. Maybe Slim Jims were secretly made by Reptilians. 

As they were about to ring up their purchases, Jonathan bounded back down the stairs and joined them. He was carrying a box in one hand with several bottles carefully nested in it, and a wired electronic device in the other. “It’s a cheap-ass model, but it’ll have to do,” he mumbled, and added it to their pile. “It’s a translator. For you. When we get to the Hub.”

“Oh! Cool,” Ozzie hoped it would work. He needed to get his hand on some kind of recording device or notebook, too. He was hoping to get his thoughts down while they were still fresh.

Jeff, however, planted his hands on his hips when he saw Walsh adding to the pile—and grabbing several things from a display case and adding them to their hoard. “What, I’m paying for _all_ of this?” he complained. 

“You know I’m good for it,” Jonathan said with a cheesy grin. 

Kurt came running up, arms full. “I got Jungle Bob’s rats n ‘snax mix!”

Jonathan’s head snapped up. “Nacho cheese flavored?”

“You know it, bro. And cool ranch.”

“ _Nice.”_

“You want some, Earth?” Kurt tossed him a bag.

Ozzie grimaced. “I’m . . . gonna take a pass, thanks,” he said. 

“Suit yourself.”

oOoOoOo

“Hello,” Ozzie said, enunciating clearly.

The microphone gave a short hiss. 

“Is this thing working right?” He wiggled the earpiece. 

“Sure, it’s working right. You’re just an idiot.” Kurt twisted the microphone away from Ozzie’s mouth and blurted, “Hsphash pfffesssleh!”

“Fart master!” the earbud helpfully intoned.

Kurt was howling. “Yeah, it’s working, all right!”

“Oh. Thanks.” Ozzie rolled his eyes. His own words were filtered through a speaker that was on a band around his neck and came out sounding like a squelchy bass tone followed by terrible feedback. 

“It’s Alteran Universal,” Jonathan Walsh explained, twisting a little dial on the speaker. Having Walsh’s hands brush against his neck made Ozzie feel flushed, for reasons he didn’t want to think about. 

“ _What_ Universal?” 

“Alteran. It’s like, the lingua franca of outer-Hub trade,” Jonathan told him. “No more feedback?”

“No,” Ozzie agreed. “Just a weird dubstep sort of noise.”

“That means it’s working.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Fourteen-love,” Nancy announced. She was broadcasting a play-by-play of a tennis match on Earth. 

“Why tennis?” Ozzie wondered.

“She’s on a Serena Williams kick,” Jonathan told him. “Don’t ask. I tried to mess with her receiver the other night and she decked me.” 

“. . . _tall lady, she’s got a great reach, so she just has an incredible presence_ —your advances were unwelcome, Jonathan,” Nancy said.

“It wasn’t an advance, Nancy!” Jonathan squawked. “Your receiver is loose in its casing! I think you’ve got some other screws loose, too,” he added in an undertone.

“You must view the act within context,” Nancy replied. 

“Huh?”

“Even if your behavior is unintentional does not mean it is not a microaggression. There’s a systemic gender bias which—”

“DAMN IT, NANCY, I KEEP TELLING YOU, YOU’RE NOT A WOMAN! YOU’RE A ROBOT!”

Nancy’s crackling, fuzzy eyes narrowed. “Are you questioning my gender identity?”

“What?”

“I present as a woman and I self-identify as a woman.”

“She has you there, Jonathan.” Ozzie hid a smile. 

Jonathan sighed. “Fine. I’m sorry, Nancy. You are, for all intents and purposes, a woman. Are you happy?”

Nancy nodded curtly and went back to the tennis broadcast.

Jonathan shook his head. His hair was mussed. “I need a drink.” He broke open the container of liquor, and Jeff and Kurt both perked up. Ozzie resisted at first, but after trying it, he had to admit that it wasn’t half bad. A little sweet, but palatable enough, and _definitely_ alcoholic. The four of them got busy getting buzzed. After all, they were still a few days out from the Hub, and everyone was feeling tense. It felt good, that warm, happy glow. Ozzie felt more relaxed and unguarded than he had in a long time. He could tell the others were being affected, too. This led to some interesting discussions.

“So why doesn’t this Celina human just ram the ball down the throat of her opponent?” Jeff wondered. Apparently tennis was different where he came from. 

“That’d probably be some kind of foul,” Ozzie explained. “I’m sure it would . . . cost you points or something.” 

“Then why can’t she lay her eggs in the ball and then return it to her opponent, so her young hatch and eat the flesh of her competitor? That’s totally what I’d do,” said Kurt. “She’d never see it coming, and then the grubs could burrow into the other Earthling’s stomach cavity and hibernate until they pupate. Bam. Easy point.”

Ozzie shook his head. “I . . . you got me there, man.” 

“Tennis is so fucking boring.”

“Yeah. Uh, you got me there, too.” He wasn’t going to argue. Anyway, he was too enjoying the warm haze of the liquor, pleased that, for the moment, all his problems had receded for a little while. 

Later, Ozzie asked Kurt to show him the bathroom, which Kurt did, with rather less ball-busting than usual. 

“Hey, this is great,” Ozzie said, when Kurt showed him how to work the dial to get the urinal to emerge from the wall. “I’ll just been using the one in the hallway like a chump.”

Kurt, using the urinal next to Ozzie, briefly looked up. “What do you mean?”

“You know. Outside the break room?”

“Dude, _gross!_ That’s a water fountain! Shit, next thing you’ll be telling me you’ve been chewing on the wiring.”

“I’m not chewing on the wiring,” Ozzie mumbled, but Kurt wasn’t listening.

“Damn, it’s like when the kids’ chicha got out of its cage and went to ground behind the icebox.”

Ozzie zipped up his fly, his brain still ambling along behind his ears in the way it tends to do when you’ve got a good buzz on. “Wait . . . you have kids?”

“Yeah. What of it?”

“Oh, _shit_ , you’re _married!_ So _that’s_ why you keep acting all awkward around Jeff!” 

“What? No!” Kurt lowered his voice, like he was afraid in the echoing bathroom the guys outside would still here. “My wife was killed years ago by Irkens. That’s not it.”

Ozzie, looking in the bathroom mirror, saw his face sober at the thought. He struggled to think of something to say to console the Reptilian. “Dude, I’m sorry, man. That’s . . . that’s rough.”

Kurt used his elbow to press a button on the wall, and a blast of hot, slightly lemony air blew out of a vent. He held his hands up to it. “Like I said, it was a long time ago.”

Ozzie leaned against the wall. He’d hoped it would make the room less spinny, but it didn’t help much. “So then . . . how come you’re not into Jeff? Is it because you’re both, like, male?”

“Man, just don’t.”

“No, really! Come on. I won’t tell anyone. I’m just curious.” He wondered how aliens had sex. Did dudes get it on with other dudes? For some reason Jonathan Walsh kept nudging his way to the forefront of Ozzie’s mind. Did Jonathan ever . . . ? _Would_ he, ever? And how? What, like, equipment did Reptilians have? This whole weird train of thought was making Ozzie feel hot and strangely out of breath. He turned on the cold water and splashed his face.

Exasperated, Kurt turned to him with a sigh. “Look, what do you want me to say? I like Jeff. He’s an asshole, like me. He’s a lot of fun. I like him a lot.”

“So why don’t you make a move?”

“Are you kidding? We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. Even if I _wanted_ to, I don’t have any of the accoutrements for a courtship ritual. What the fuck am I supposed to do, just _wing_ it?”

Ozzie blinked several times, trying to grasp this. “Well, yeah. Come on. You think he wants something fancy? He just wants _you_ , buddy.” 

“Ha! So here I am, no face paints, no tree limbs, not even a simple ceremonial fan, and I’m suppose to just, what, _ask_ him if he wants to mate? How does _that_ even work!?” Kurt threw his hands in the air in disgust. 

“No, man. You’re totally over-thinking it.” Ozzie patted Kurt’s shoulder. “Just do you, man!”

Kurt glared. “He isn’t even a Reptilian! Even if I tried to show him how I felt, he’d think I was crazy. Greys don’t have romance. They fill out forms! He’d probably think I was a freak.”

“Naw.”

“Really? Really, Earthling? So I’m supposed to just go for it, then. What would _you_ think if I went up to you, and went all—” Kurt began to nudge Ozzie with his left elbow, hard. Then he switched to the other elbow. He spun in a circle three times.

Ozzie tried not to laugh. “That’s, uh—”

“I’m not finished! You think he’d like _this?_ ” Kurt bobbed his head, making a sound like _chug, chug,_ then he straightened, standing tall, and began to take huge steps back and forth. Suddenly he screamed, “ _AAAAAAAWWWWWK! AAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWK!”_

Ozzie winced, covering his ears. “You don’t have to—”

Kurt spun again, backing against Ozzie, crouching and wiggling his butt. 

Suddenly the doorway darkened. “What’s all the noise? Are you guys all—Kurt! And . . . _Ozzie?_ You’re doing the mating dance for _him?_ ” both Jeff and Jonathan stood in the doorway, looking shocked. Jeff pointed a finger at Ozzie. “I _knew_ we never should have brought you back to life! You . . . you _floozy!_ ” He ran off, looking upset. 

Kurt just stood there, open-mouthed. “He knows what a Reptilian mating dance looks like?”

“He asked me about it,” Jonathan said. He cleared his throat and tried to keep a straight face. “Like, a couple of weeks ago.” 

“Oh . . . shit.” Kurt ran after Jeff. 

Jonathan and Ozzie stood there for a long moment, looking at each other. 

“Don’t say it. Just . . . don’t say it,” Ozzie grumbled. 

Jonathan doubled over laughing. 

“Is that really how you guys, uh, do that?”

Jonathan was practically on the floor. “Beats me,” he gasped. “I’ve been on Earth way too long. As far as I know, only the traditionalists do it like that,” he managed eventually, wheezing. “I, personally, never felt the urge. Oh, man. Ozzie, your _face!_ ”

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry if I’m a little out of practice went it comes to being twerked on by a giant lizard dude.”

Wiping his eyes, Jonathan said, “You know, I have an idea.” He took a swig from the bottle of XyxUwwwxvqxqv, which he’d brought with him from the other room. He offered it to Ozzie, who accepted and took a long pull himself. The burn of alcohol melted away his discomfort. Alien liquor was _strong_.

“What idea?” Ozzie asked. 

“They’re both drunk, right? I bet you anything Jeff went running back to his room and Kurt followed him. Let’s just follow along, shut the door, and block it. We’ll lock them in there and we won’t let them out until they confess their love and stop being idiots. I mean, the bedroom doors are so cheap they don’t even use hydraulics. They just have hinges and knobs and crappy skeleton keys sitting in the dust on the doorframe. We’ll just lock ‘em in until . . . you know. Until they get it out of their system.”

This struck Ozzie as a very good idea. “Hell, yeah! Like, like Seven Minutes in Heaven! In outer space! Let’s do it!” He paused, then took another drink. “This shit is really good.”

“Right?”

“I mean, I feel _good_.”

Jonathan took the bottle away. Ozzie was hurt, but the man only took a drink and passed it back. “You and me both, brother.” They smiled at each other in conspiratorial harmony.

oOoOoOo

The plan started off fine. Ozzie and Jonathan crept up to Jeff’s door, snuffling and sizzling as they tried to smother their drunken giggles behind their hands. If Kurt hadn’t been hollering, “I WASN’T FLIRTING! I WAS DEMONSTRATING A CULTURAL TOUCHPOINT, YOU STUPID SACK OF SHIT!” they probably would have been caught; they were sure making enough noise.

“Here I go!” Jonathan sort of crabwalked down the hall to the open door, trying to duck and press himself against the wall. He probably thought he was being inconspicuous, but Jonathan Walsh, crouched down and hurrying along like a duck that had been hit in the head, only sent Ozzie into smothered spasms of laughter once more. When Jonathan reached the door he turned. “Should I do it?” he mouthed. “Should I do it? I’m gonna do it!”

“Do it,” Ozzie mouthed back. “Do it!” he encouraged. 

“Okay, okay.” Jonathan slammed his whole body against the door and it banged shut. 

“The _fuck?_ ” Kurt squawked. 

Either Kurt or Jeff tried to fling the door back open, nearly knocking over Jonathan, who was drunkenly pressed against the door. 

“Shit! Ozzie, help! I forgot . . . what was the next step?”

“The key! The—the _lock_ ,” Ozzie said helpfully. He staggered over to the door, which popped open again. This time Ozzie and Jonathan _both_ pushed it shut and leaned against it. 

Jonathan was sniggering like a useless twit. “The key, right?” he managed. The door bumped them again and they sort of bounced off and fell back, trying to keep it shut, both of them laughing helplessly. 

“The key!” Ozzie said. Jonathan was groping around the frame. He managed to knock the slim bit of metal to the floor. 

“Knock it off, you assholes!” Jeff was yelling. “Let us out!”

Ozzie bent over and scooped up the key. The door opened again, just enough to hit him in the butt and knock him over. 

By this time, Jonathan was howling with laughter. He fell back against the door, and the combined strength of Jeff and Kurt wasn’t enough to budge one Reptilian, nearly collapsed with laughter. 

Ozzie managed to get up and tried to give the key to Jonathan. Even with their goal close at hand, it took several tries with clumsy, often joined-to-the-point-of-interfering hands, fiddling with the lock before they managed to turn the key. 

“We did it!” Ozzie looked at Jonathan with wide eyes. 

The doorknob rattled. “WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM, YOU FUCKNUGGETS?” Kurt roared. 

“Are we locked in? Did they _lock us in?_ ” Jeff gasped. 

“And you . . .” Jonathan hiccuped. “You can just _stay_ in there until you stop—stop—stopping. All the time.”

“You have to kiss before we’ll let you out!” Ozzie yelled helpfully. 

“ _WHAT!?_ ” Jeff yelped. 

“Stop being such a baby,” Ozzie told him. “He likes you. You like him. Just fucking . . . _do it,_ already.”

“You unevolved sack of crap! When I get my hands on you—” Kurt threatened.

Ozzie wasn’t listening. “You love him, you want to _kiss_ him,” he sang, a la Miss Congeniality, a romcom that he would never admit to owning on DVD. “Go on, Jeff, get yourself some lizard love!”

“Come on, Jeff, it’s not that weird,” Jonathan added. “I mean, sure, there’s the long tongue, the scales, the temperature sensing organs, the shedding skin, but you like each other, right? It’s just natural. I mean. Even _I_ can smell your arousal. Our vomeronasal organs can detect the pheromones just floooooooding that room.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” they heard Jeff mutter. 

Someone hit the door so hard that the whole ship seemed to vibrate for a second. “I’M GONNA KILL YOU BOTH AND MAKE REPTILIAN-SKIN BOOTS AND AN EARTHLING HAT, YOU FUCKERS,” Kurt snarled. The door rattled as he threw himself against it again.

Ozzie and Jonathan stared at each other. “Pffffff….” Ozzie broke down completely, and Jonathan grabbed him by the elbow.

“Let’s get out of here!”

They made a run for it or, rather, a stagger, bumping into each other and walls and everything else even marginally in their path as they went.

They ended up back in Jonathan’s room, sitting on the floor with their backs against the bed, still sharing the bottle of hooch. Jonathan was flushed and rumpled, and for once Ozzie didn’t want to strangle him. “You look good, by the way,” he said. “You ought to do your hair that way more often.”

“Yeah?” Jonathan looked genuinely pleased, even if his eyes were a little unfocussed and his speech was kind of slurred. “The secret is no product, a bit of sweat, and . . . and accidentally knocking yourself into walls.”

“I’ll tell my stylist.” Ozzie was starting to feel drowsy and comfortable, and was eyeing Jonathan’s shoulder speculatively. It looked like a good place for a nap. 

Jonathan took a pull from the bottle and gave Ozzie a crooked grin. “You know, this is about as relaxed as I’ve ever seen you.”

“Yeah? Well, the secret is getting me really, really drunk,” Ozzie returned cavalierly. 

Raising the bottle in salute, Jonathan said, “I will remember that in the future.”

Ozzie let his head flop to the side so he could get a better look at the Reptilian. “You know something? At times like this, you don’t seem like a _complete_ asshole.”

“Thanks. Back atcha, buddy,” Jonathan replied, taking another swig. 

“No, I mean it. So, can I ask you something?”

Jonathan blinked several times. This caused his eyes to turn yellow and slitted, then back to media mogul blue, and then one of each. “Sure. Shoot.”

“So why do you . . . you know. Why do you wanna destroy my planet? Oh, I know that we’re ‘friends’ now and all. But why _did_ you? What’d we ever do to you?”

Jonathan’s head dropped. “I didn’t.” He heaved a sigh and lifted his head. “It’s just my _job_ , man.”

“Your job?”

“Yeah.”

“How come?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, what made you decide on the ‘conquering lesser species’ career path? Wasn’t there anything else you wanted to do? Anything else you qualified for? Interior design? Selling used cars? Hell, don’t you people have McDonald’s?”

Walsh’s smile was wry. “We don’t have fast food, no.” He looked wistful for a moment. “My life would have been very different if I could have worked at Long John Silver’s.” 

“Yeah, you’d have been roughly spherical, for one thing,” Ozzie noted dryly.

Jonathan gave him a dirty look. “I . . . didn’t have a choice. You know how some kids turn into teenagers and fall in with some rough kids and . . . you know, you steal your dad’s car and go on a joyride and knock down a mailbox? And then they get caught and sent off do something of benefit to society instead of continuing their random hooliganism?” 

Ozzie thought this over. “So what are you saying? Wait, was taking over Earth your community service?”

Walsh laughed. “No. I’m saying replace ‘car’ with ‘T-Wing Interstellar Racer’ and ‘mailbox’ with ‘the side of a cryopreservational motel’ and then replace ‘community service’ with, uh, ‘military school.’”

“Oh. Ohhhhhh, I get it. Shit, man, that’s rough.” Ozzie looked at him sympathetically. “So like, it wasn’t your choice, then?”

Jonathan shrugged. “It was only natural to go straight into the military afterwards. I mean, I graduated with okay grades, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. The only thing I was really good at was acting, and that’s not a real viable career path, at least, not to hear my father tell it. I could have made military propaganda films, but I decided being a spy sounded more fun.”

Ozzie frowned. Then he looked at Jonathan again, more closely. “Is that seriously your, like, title? Spy?”

“Yeah. Reptilian equivalent. You know. Undercover shit. Blend in, gather data.” He gave Ozzie a sideways glance. “Why? Does that, uh, bother you?”

“Nah. It’s kind of . . . cool, actually. So you’re, like, the lizard version of James Bond.” Jonathan laughed so hard he snorted, to Ozzie’s delight. “You know something? You’re okay. I mean, you’re actually fun to hang out with, when you’re not walking around pretending to be a major douchebag millionaire.”

Jonathan straightened, looking sincerely touched. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean it?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I get a hug?”

“Nope.”

“Come on. Just one hug.” Jonathan pitched forward, arms open. Ozzie couldn’t tell if he was actually trying for a hug, or just falling over. 

He tried to push the man away, but it wasn’t happening. “Oh, all right, then,” he sighed, patting Jonathan’s shoulder.

Jonathan used Ozzie’s own shoulder as leverage and pushed himself back, just far enough to look into Ozzie’s face. “You know what your problem is?”

Ozzie’s brow wrinkled. “I’m drunk?” he guessed. 

“No!”

“Aliens are using my planet for a duel at high noon?”

“No. Well, that, too. Your problem is, you’re too uptight.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep. You take life too seriously. You never just go with the flow.” Jonathan was too close, and he seemed like he was looking at Ozzie’s mouth with cross-eyed earnestness. 

“Maybe you’re right,” Ozzie agreed. He thought about this. There were a lot of times he could have just—just let life _happen_ a little, instead of being dragged along. He _could_ have gone bowling with Gerry sometimes. He could have let Margaret read his palm that one time she’d asked. He could have let Richard show him those slides of the vacation he’d taken in Akron, “the town with the most Reptilian architecture in America.” Well, okay, maybe not that. But he should definitely let his guard down more often. “You know what?” he said, looking at Walsh in renewed appreciation. “You are definitely right. I’m going to make a change. Go with the flow more often. I’m going to start taking chances and saying yes once in a while.”

“Good. Then I’m going to kiss you, and maybe you won’t hit me for it.”

“Fifty-fifty,” Ozzie replied, on autopilot. His brow wrinkled as his brain started to catch up. “Wait. You’re going to what?”

Jonathan kissed him.

It had to be the third weirdest thing that had happened to Ozzie that day. Well, it was probably in the top ten, anyway.

Even weirder? Ozzie kind of liked it.

“So, are you going to hit me?” Jonathan asked when they finally pulled away a little. Ozzie didn’t answer. “You know, you’re even cuter when you’re all out of focus,” Jonathan said, still bumping noses and looking at him cross-eyed. 

“Super romantic,” Ozzie replied. Walsh’s weird eyes were starting to freak him out. “Help me up. I gotta pee.”

oOoOoOo

After Ozzie had stumbled back to his own bed and Jonathan had fallen asleep (not necessarily in that order) Ozzie took a good long while to drift off himself. For one thing, Jeff and Kurt were still arguing. Jeff’s quarters, such as they were, were right between Jonathan’s room and Ozzie’s, and the walls were paper-thin. For another thing, kissing Jonathan had given Ozzie a lot to think about. Jeff and Kurt’s arguments tumbled around and got caught up with Ozzie’s own arguments until his drunken brain was spinning and he couldn’t tell which was which.

_Look, there’s a stigma where I’m from, dudes getting it on with other dudes. It’s--it’s not okay. My entire family would flip!_

_You think I’d have chosen things to happen this way? You’re a **subcreature** where I come from, asshole. _

Okay, that last bit was probably one of the aliens talking.

_Subcreature, my ass! Who are YOU showing off for, anyway? Your entire civilization is probably dead!_

Ozzie flinched.

_Low blow, Kurt! Low blow!_

_I’m not denying there’s an attraction, it’s just . . . holy shit, you know? Holy shit. I’m still, like, trying to wrap my head around it._

_Okay, fine. But you’ve been ‘holy shitting’ for months now. Anyway, it’s not that fucking complicated. Either you want it or you don’t._

Huh. There was a thought. 

_We don’t even have anything in common!_

_Right, right. Absolutely nothing. Except that we laugh at the same shit and we’ve managed to survive way too long with no one else to rely on, and I know you have my back no matter how big a prick you pretend to be, and I don’t even need to tell you what I need before you figure it out and hand it to me . . ._

_Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever._

_Okay! Fine! Have it your way! I’ll just find someone else. I don’t need you!_

_Oh, please. What is this bullshit? Are you trying to make me **jealous?** That’s a laugh!_

_Hey, you said it yourself; my entire civilization is probably dead! I might as well fuck whoever I want!_

_Yeah? Like who, genius? You’re stuck on this flying shitpile full of misfits, same as me, pal._

_Who knows? Maybe Jonathan! Why not? He’s Reptilian. He’s up for interspecies stuff._

_WHAT?_

_Yeah! How do you like **them** bleebups? I doubt he’d say no. Everyone knows Walsh will fuck anyone!_

Ozzie frowned. Wait, _what?_ No way. The thought somehow made his stomach clench. He guessed it made sense if Jonathan was a player. Wasn’t James Bond always out there chasing women? The thought really made Ozzie angry for some reason, though. Was that what Jonathan had been doing with him? Trying to get information or something? No . . . what information did Ozzie have? Besides, they were both just drunk and maybe a bit horny. 

_Oh, please, in the last ten years he’s only seemed remotely interested in one person—_

_Yeah, and considering who that person is, the bar is set pretty low, Kurt._

Who? Ozzie wondered. He was beginning to doze off, still wondering what his life was becoming. Was he attracted to Jonathan Walsh? _Jonathan Walsh_ , of all people? Er, of all Reptilians? Even he could accept being attracted to another guy, and even if he could accept being attracted to a—a ~lizard overlord, how could he possibly accept being attracted to a giant douchebag? Walsh once wore a St. Laurent jacket and crocs to an Occupy Wall Street protest. When Ozzie complained about him even _being_ there, he’d had the gall to say that he’d occupied Wall Street before it was cool and didn’t see the problem. Jonathan Walsh said things out loud like, ‘Beer is the new wine, but coffee enemas are the new beer.’ Walsh once forced everyone to go to a Halloween office party where he, himself dressed up as a chapstick just so he could walk around telling everyone he was “the balm.” Jonathan Walsh was totally and enormously exasperating. Of course, that had been when he was undercover. Now, Jonathan Walsh was . . . well, still pretty exasperating. 

On the other hand, he was also a pretty good kisser.

And he had nice eyes, when they weren’t creepy yellow crocodile eyes.

And he was, after all, Ozzie’s friend. 

Above all, Jonathan Walsh was . . . a really good guy. 

And a good kisser with a disarming smile who always smelled really nice, and who had a way of looking at Ozzie’s mouth that made Ozzie’s stomach do flips. 

Just as Ozzie began to finally drift off, a rhythmic _thud thud thud_ woke him again. Something was banging against the wall. He looked at it with a wrinkled brow. Then—

“Oh, _Kurt!_ ”

Ozzie felt his whole face get hot. Jesus, this was a new low. Aliens doing it in the room next door? This was worse than his college dorm, when the jock in the room next to his would bring girls home Friday nights. Ozzie lifted his hand and went to bang on the wall and tell them to keep it down, but then thought better. This was his own fault. Well, and Walsh’s. They’d locked Jeff and Kurt up so they’d get it out of their system, and now they were getting it out of their system.

He rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head. 

“Oh, _Jeff!_ Yeah, do that thing with your squeedlyspooch again!”

Ozzie groaned. 

Eventually he fell asleep to the sounds of sweet alien love-making, thinking about Jonathan Walsh and wondering what a squeedlyspooch did.

oOoOoOo

The next morning—if it was morning, and it probably wasn’t, not in any sense—Ozzie woke, groggy and gross. He managed to wash his face. He would have put on new clothes, but he didn’t have any. Instead, he went in search of coffee and found Jeff and Kurt in the little break room. They both had mugs of something and seemed to be just sitting there, waiting for him.

“Uh, hi, guys.”

Nancy approached him with a pot of something steaming. “Would you like a cup of coffee? Or perhaps a cup of yorful? I’d offer you something for breakfast, but the food-mo-tron seems to be malfunctioning.”

Was Nancy programmed to know what humans could consume? And even if she had been, had it been overwritten by Serena Williams’ last six matches? Better not to risk it. “I’ll stick with coffee,” he said. It smelled like heaven. “What’s wrong with the food-mo-tron?”

“It’s all that Earth junk food it’s been processing,” Kurt said in disgust. “Apparently last night when he was drunk Jonathan came down tried to get it to make deep fried, chocolate-covered fish-sticks with szechuan sauce. Now this is all it does.” He pressed the button on the side and a bunch of small, live goldfish began to shoot out.

“Ugh!”

“Ugh is right. Speaking of ugh. We had to jimmy the door open with one of the washers from the frame from Jeff’s bed. Which meant we had to dismantle Jeff’s bed. That was fun.” Kurt glowered.

Ozzie rubbed the back of his neck. “Um, look. I’m real sorry about last night. We were drunk and . . . I make bad decisions when I’m drunk.”

Both aliens ignored him. “You got the Com?” Kurt asked. Jeff held up a white sort of microphone thing. Kurt nodded. 

Jeff pushed a button on the microphone. “Good morning, Jonathan.” His voice was broadcast across the ship, very syrupy and slightly tinny. “I don’t know where you are, but I wanted to let you know that your pet human is here with us in the eating quarters, and we’re about to tell him all about your plan for getting through the Hub. With details.” He gave Ozzie a little smile. “Have a nice day.” He placed the microphone back on the table with exaggerated precision. 

Ozzie stood there, confused. Nancy brought him a cup of coffee, which he barely looked at. “What plan for getting through the Hub? What’s going on?”

Jeff continued to look at him with that odd little smile. Kurt was looking at a round electronic thing he took out of his pocket. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one.”

Jonathan Walsh ran through the door, skidding the last couple of feet. His hair was a mess. “Look, I know you’re angry about last night,” he began, but Jeff cut him off. 

“He’s going to marry you,” he told Ozzie. “That’s his big plan. To marry you.”

Kurt got up. “I think we’re just about done here,” he said. “You, uh, want me to carry your coffee?”

“What are you—why would I—? That’s sweet. No,” Jeff replied. “Thanks. I’m done.” They headed for the door. 

“Wait, _what?_ ” Ozzie yelped. “What do you mean, marry me? Where are you going?”

Jeff turned just outside the door and blinked innocently. “I think you two deserve some privacy. You know, for when Jonathan admits he loves you and all that.”

Jonathan, still wearing his human suit as usual, was pink. “It’s not like that, Ozzie,” he said. He wiped his hands on his pants and then put on his big, fake smile. “See, I’ve had Nancy calculating plans for weeks, and this is the only one with any probability of succeeding. The thing is, they won’t let you through the Hub otherwise. There’s legal precedent for allowing intelligent life-forms to prove their cognitivity, but we have to challenge the law that prohibits all lower life-forms from entering, due to—”

“ _Bullshit_ ,” Kurt spat. “He’s developed tender and somewhat passionate feelings for you,” he interjected. “He feels meeting you changed the trajectory of his fucking life in a positive way, because you’ve helped him to experience empathy or some horseshit, and this sensitivity has blossomed into an attraction to you. He admitted this to me in a rare moment of drunken vulnerability last night in secret. Also, I have it recorded.” Kurt held up the round electronic thing again and squeezed it. 

A hologram of Kurt and Jonathan appeared above them. Jonathan had one hand on Kurt’s shoulder and was leaning in, in a conspiratorial way. “Meeting Ozzie changed the trajectory of my life,” the hologram of Jonathan announced in a very earnest manner that made Ozzie question his sincerity. He was also slurring his speech just a little. “In a really positive way. He helped me to experience empathy, which is this amazing new emotion. And, like, because of that, this—this _sensitivity_ has blossomed into an intense attraction to him. Also, he has a really nice ass.”

Kurt squeezed the electronic again and the holograph disappeared. 

Both Ozzie and Walsh stood there, gaping at Jeff and Kurt in silent shock. 

“Nancy, please lock the door until Jonathan has revealed the truth to Ozzie,” Jeff asked sweetly. “The _entire_ truth.”

“You got it,” Nancy replied. The door slid shut with a whoosh. Nancy was still in the kitchen, which was going to make things even more awkward.

“Hey, Earth boy! Better get used to the idea of lizard love now, eh?” Kurt called through the closed door. 

“Don’t worry,” Jeff added. “Tastes just like chicken!” he cackled. 

Ozzie turned to Jonathan, who looked like he might throw up. 

“Nancy, unlock the door,” Jonathan ordered.

“No.”

“Now!” Jonathan thundered. 

“I can’t. There’s something interfering with my navigational transmissions. I need full concentration to keep them online.”

“It’s probably all the damn tennis you downloaded. I told you; you need maintenance,” Jonathan said. 

Nancy waved him to silence. “Don’t bother me. I have to find a way to amplify my magnetic and electric field.” She threw her arms in the air and began to waggle them back and forth. She leaned to one side, then the other, then straightened again. She hiked one leg off the ground, then gave a nod. “This will do.”

“Is she doing the crane technique from the Karate Kid?”

“Beats me.”

Ozzie crossed his arms over his chest. “Spill, Walsh. What’s this plan you’ve got?” It was definitely the easier bit of the two-pronged question facing him, so he started with that.

“It’s complicated.”

“You told me you ‘woke me up’ because Kurt and Jeff were annoying.”

“They were!”

“Walsh! You lied to me!”

Jonathan actually flinched. “I didn’t lie, exactly. If I sinned, it was a sin of omission.” Ozzie just stood there, stone-faced, waiting. Finally Jonathan capitulated. “Lesser life-forms aren’t allowed within the union-controlled space past the Hub unless they can prove that they’re actually higher life-forms. There’s a legal and scientific protocol for this, but it takes time.” His eyes pleaded with Ozzie. “And time’s not something we have.” 

“So . . . it’s like a green card for outer space.”

“See, this is why you’re a shoo-in. You’re a great representative for your species.”

“Don’t try to flatter me.” Ozzie went and plopped himself down at the table. 

Jonathan made an exaggerated, _Oooooookay_ sort of face. “However, there is a way to speed up the process. If a species that’s already part of the Interstellar Union has a valid marriage to a—a _previously undiscovered_ or, or _unacknowledged_ life-form, we only have to prove two things--that you’re consenting and that you’re capable of consent. I mean, ordinarily you’d be subjected to an intense battery of tests, but this . . . it’s more of a good faith test predicated on the belief that members of species from the Interstellar Union are capable of identifying life-forms intelligent enough to be considered as mates. It’s a really simple series of tests.” He approached Ozzie slowly, like he might jump up and punch him in the nose, but when that didn’t happen, he gingerly pulled out a chair and took a seat across from Ozzie.

“Okay. So why didn’t you tell me this in beginning? Why didn’t you lead with this?”

“Hi, Ozzie! Welcome back to life! You were dead, and I fixed that so I could marry you.” Jonathan smirked triumphantly. “That would have gone real well.”

“There are a lot of different ways to approach the subject without omitting it altogether.”

“Fine.” Walsh threw his hands in the air. “I should have told you. I’m sorry.”

Ozzie stared at nothing for awhile, letting the idea turn over in his brain. “Does this mean we get to the Hub and then I have to let you grind your butt on my leg?”

“No,” Jonathan assured him. “They’ll have assumed I did the grinding already, in private. Come on, Ozzie. I like you. And don’t pretend that there isn’t anything there,” he added, gesturing between himself and Ozzie. 

“No. You’re crazy.”

“Admit it. You’re not even a little curious about this? Come on. Look at this face.” Jonathan gave him his cheesiest smile. 

“You are the most narcissistic hipster idiot I’ve ever met,” Ozzie grumbled.

“Come on. For Earth?”

“Well . . . okay,” Ozzie said slowly. “I mean, it’s not like I have a choice.”

“Good. Great!” Jonathan sounded relieved. “When we get to the Hub, we’ll head for screening first. It’s basically like customs. We’ll explain things, and they’ll bring in the paperwork and call the lawyers. It’ll take them a while to process the paperwork, so we’ll call in the Info Dispersion people—basically like, you know, the news reporters. We’ll do some PR. We want to spin this right.” Jonathan got up and began to pace. “We’ll tell everyone you’re the doss.”

“Doss? What’s that?”

“The doss? It’s slang for docile. It’s like a Reptilian S&M term, kind of along the lines of a Submissive.” Jonathan didn’t even look ashamed of himself. “It just means that you bottom, that you obey me sexually, that kind of thing.”

“What? No, way! I’m not telling them that! _You’re_ not telling them that!”

“Ozzie, it would make the relationship a whole lot more palatable to Reptilian society if they felt I had . . . some kind of control. Frankly, it would make it more palatable to everyone.”

Ozzie ground his teeth. “No. Just . . . not happening, dude. Why would you even go into that kind of detail?”

“You people have a reputation to live down,” Jonathan insisted. “It’s not like they haven’t heard of humans before. They know stuff. We _all_ know stuff. You start actual wars over _levels of melanin,_ Ozzie. That’s like a half-step above eating your own poop!” He jabbed a finger at Ozzie. “You’re like the disgusting redneck neighbors who get drunk and shoot wildly at each other with rifles because you had an argument over who ate the last waffle. I mean, I can’t _wait_ to introduce you to my family.”

“Once again, _real_ romantic, Walsh.”

“Hey, you’re the redneck of the universe, not me.”

“Oh, fine, we might be a little messed up, but we don’t go around enslaving other planets, so I don’t see how you have room to talk. Nothing doing, lizard man.”

Jonathan put one hand on his hip and tilted his head. “Okay. When we get back to the Hub, I’ll just transmit a communication to the rest of your group. ‘Sorry, guys. We were going to bring the Reptilian army, but Ozzie didn’t want them to think I was doing stuff to his butt. We’d love to help you out with the Cuben invasion, but my hands are tied. You’re on your own.” He thrust his chin out a little and gave Ozzie a challenging look.

Ozzie balled his hands into fists. _Shit._ He wondered what was happening to the rest of the group. They couldn’t communicate with Earth, so it could be anything. They could be slaves right now. The Cubes might be torturing them. He tried to imagine explaining himself to them, and their reactions were not prepossessing. Yvonne, in particular, would have said, ‘ _Wait a minute, Ozzie. Let me get this straight. You are gonna let us get killed because you don’t want that alien tellin’ people you let him do stuff to your butt. You_ better _rethink your position, because otherwise, IMMA ‘bout to do stuff to your butt, and it AIN’T gonna be sexy.’_

On the other hand, Ozzie was going to be the ambassador of all humans, and this was their first foray into interstellar politics. He had a feeling things were going to go badly for the human race if he allowed their first role to be an obsequious _servant_ type of deal. Ozzie planted a fist on the table. “No, Walsh. I’m sorry. I just can’t agree to that.”

Before Jonathan could respond, the ship jolted, the lights went off, and a loud alarm began to blare. The emergency lights came back on, bathing everything in a dim red glow.

Ozzie was thrown forward over the table, sloshing his drink across it. “What was that!?”

“We are being boarded,” Nancy intoned. 

“Oh, _shit._ ” Jonathan looked wild. “They can’t do that! This is a Reptilian ship! They won’t get away with this.”

“Boarded? What does _that_ mean? Who’s boarding us?”

Jonathan heaved a ragged sigh. “It has to be radium raders.”

“What do they want?”

“Our fuel. Outside of the Hub, Radium X is really hard to come by due to the Neutron embargo.”

“The what and the what?”

“Suffice it to say that outside the Hub, fuel is expensive. Some people would rather steal it than pay for it.” Jonathan was headed for the door.

The ship began to shimmy, then rock back and forth violently. Ozzie held onto the table to steady himself. “W-what do we do?”

“Stay calm. You lock yourself in.” Jonathan paused and began to peel his face off while Ozzie grimaced. “I’m going to get the plasma gun and I will take care of this. I’ll just explain things to them.”

“Jesus, are you sure? Won’t they have guns?”

“They’re just raiders, Ozzie. Punks. Don’t worry about it.” Jonathan gave him a bright smile and left. 

“Nancy, help me,” Ozzie said, moving the table. “We gotta block the door.”

“I cannot move or I risk losing all control of the ship.”

“Great.” Ozzie looked around. There weren’t a whole lot of options, especially considering the door in the kitchen retracted. What could stop that? On the basis that it couldn’t hurt, Ozzie pushed the table up against it. 

“Disable the latching mechanism,” Nancy advised.

“Where? How?”

“To the left of the door is a small metal plate. Pry it off and the door will not open.”

Ozzie got a fork out of one of the drawers and went to town. When the plate popped off, it emitted several sparks and a burnt odor. He figured that would be the best he could do. 

Somewhere in the ship’s corridors, he heard screaming. 

“Shit. _Shit._ ” Ozzie paced. “What are they saying?”

Nancy, still on one leg, didn’t so much as shrug. “Mostly incoherent sounds of anger and/or distress.”

Ozzie jammed his hands in his pockets and felt the translator in the left one. He hurriedly got it out and tugged the microphone part on, stuck the earpiece in and listened closely. The random screams were just that—random screams—but they sounded rather deeper. And in the background, an electronic sort of voice was saying monotonously, “ _Put down your weapons and surrender. Fighting is useless. Surrender and relinquish your fuel and you will not be harmed. Put down your weapons and surrender.”_

 _Yeah, right,_ Ozzie thought. 

All of a sudden he heard a yelp. “There’s one! Get him!” There was a loud, unidentifiable noise, something between the _fwhoosh_ of a large fire and the electric crackle of a bug zapper. Someone screamed, and Ozzie felt an electric jolt. “That was Jonathan!” he yelled. “Shit. Shit, Nancy, what do we do?”

Nancy’s eyes were narrowed. “I am endeavoring to hack their computer system but success seems less than assured.”

“Great.” Ozzie paced back and forth, listening intently. Was Jonathan okay? What happened to Kurt and Jeff? The ship was eerily quiet now except for the electronic voice, ordering them all to surrender over and over again. 

_THWAM._ Ozzie jumped a foot. “Shit! What was that?”

“They’re attempting to break down the door,” Nancy said calmly. 

_THWAM._

“Shit,” Ozzie repeated, just on general principle. He looked around wildly for a weapon. The only thing he could see the food-mo-tron, which wasn’t even working to make food, let alone weapons. Ozzie grabbed it anyway, just because he needed to grab _something._

“This is rid-HONK-ulous,” Ozzie’s earbud muttered. “Let’s not bother opening this d—oOOOooooOOR.” The translator seemed to be having difficulties, but it sounded like they were going to skip the kitchen. _Please,_ Ozzie prayed, _Please just let them skip this room._ Maybe they’d just take what they wanted and Ozzie would be able to get out afterward and patch up the others, if they weren’t hurt too badly. 

But then he saw, at the bottom of the door frame, a thin, oily substance. It spread out like a black puddle.

“Oh, _shit!_ ” Ozzie jumped back. What if it was some kind of acid? “Nancy, get back! Don’t let it touch you!” he jumped up to sort of awkwardly sit on one of the counters. 

Before Nancy could respond, the puddle sat up and merged into three big sort of amoebas—or what Ozzie took for amoebas, anyway. They did have large antennae or eye-stalks or something with big, blinking eyes at the end, which Ozzie didn’t think amoebas had . . . but then again, he’d taken lit-heavy courses in college, and what little science he’d learned apparently hadn’t stuck that well.

“Sllllluuuurp— _What the hell is that RODENTcrackleCASTLEbuzzBUBBLEGUMhiss_ DAIRY COW _thing?_ CLICK CLICK CLICK _It looks like_ CRACKLE _you_ WORD NOT LOCATED _it’s dangerous?_ ”

 _Cheap-ass truck-stop translator,_ Ozzie thought. “Hey, uh,” he said, waving nervously. “We come in peace.” 

“Bzzrthp— _Pieces?_ ” the earpiece said helpfully. “ _Did it say they wHOMWHOM in pieces?_ ” 

“Well, the ship’s a cracklecrackleFOREIGN DELICACY of junk, so yeah, I’d EEEEEEeeeeeee think so.” Ozzie yanked the earpiece out, leaving the tiny microphone still in place.

“ _Fuck._ It’s like electronic feedback.” 

The intruders slid closer. 

“You better back off,” Ozzie gulped. “You don’t wanna mess with me, I promise.” 

The aliens hardly seemed intimidated. They oozed closer, antennae stretching forward malevolently. Was this how it all ended? Was Earth doomed because Ozzie wasn’t man enough to figure out how to defeat three blobs of walking snot? It wasn’t fair! He’d come so far!

One of the eye-stalks brushed his knee.

“HEY! YOU BETTER BACK OFF, I MEAN IT!” He brandished the food-mo-tron at them. “I’m fuckin’ crazy, man. You don’t want to mess with me. I’ll—I’ll _eat_ you if you come any closer.”

They stopped short, and Ozzie’s heart soared with hope. These things didn’t know how humans worked! Maybe he could scare them all off!

“Yeah, that’s right. I’ll cook you up in a frying pan and have you for breakfast!” he shouted into the mic. “I’ll fuck you up!”

One amoeba got too close to Nancy. “Blublublbub blooble,” it said, and poked her in the breast. Nancy’s otherworldly eyes narrowed, and she promptly launched a flying jump kick that would have made Mr. Miyagi weep with pride. It cut the amoeba in two halves—top and bottom—and the other two aliens backed away hurriedly, eye-stalks wavering in alarm. The third oozed back together, but (and it could have been entirely Ozzie’s imagination) it seemed wobbly on its feet. Maybe they _could_ be stopped!

“Slnuuuuusshhhhh? Urb urb glug glug!” The amoebas consulted urgently with one another. 

Ozzie jumped down from the counter. “I’ll eat you, and then I’ll track down your families and I’ll eat them too!” he warned. “Hell, I’ll eat your whole planet! I’m from Earth, motherfucker! You know I’ll do it!”

The amoebas dripped and chittered anxiously, mostly in their drippy language, but Ozzie definitely caught the word _Earth_ in there.

“That’s right! Earth! I’m an Earthling! And I’ll--I’ll move in next door and put a truck up on cinderblocks, you goddamn cockroaches!” He lunged toward them, and the food-mo-tron shot flopping goldfish in all directions. “Have a taste of my murderous goldfish!”

“SLIP SLUP SLOOOOOP!” Ozzie hurriedly grabbed up the earpiece and shoved it back in, but the translator had apparently given up; it was screeching PENIS! PENIS! PENIS! 

The amoebas made a run for it—well, a splash for it—and Ozzie pumped a fist in triumph. “We did it, Nancy!” He watched the raiders squeeze frantically back under the door.

“Girl power,” Nancy said with a solemn nod. 

Ozzie opened his mouth to point out the flaw in her logic—his argument hinging on facial hair, among other things—when he thought better of it. Besides, who said girls couldn’t have facial hair? His first grade teacher, Ms. Mandalin, had a mustache Groucho Marx would have envied. She was also one of Ozzie’s favorite teachers, having introduced him to Ezra Jack Keats’ _The Snowy Day._ “Yeah, Nancy. Girl Power.” He looked at the woman—robot—whatever and added, “Are you okay? You’re not searching for signal or whatever?”

“I’m no longer being blocked,” she said. 

“Good. Great! Here, help me get this door open. We have to help the others.”

oOoOoOo

It took awhile, but Nancy and Ozzie eventually got the door open. Well, if Ozzie was being perfectly honest, Nancy was the one who got the door open, but he did credit himself for handing her things when she asked for them.

The hallway was still bathed in the red glare of the emergency lights. There was a twisted hulk of metal smoldering against one wall. “What the hell’s that?”

“A support beam.” She nodded; one of the walls was ripped open, its innards spilling out in a tangle of wires and metal.

“Did the raiders do it?”

“Yes.” Nancy was always a bit clipped. Ozzie struggled to communicate more effectively. 

“No, I mean, _how_ did the raiders do it? They looked like you could mop them up with a kleenex.”

“They very likely had neutron blasters,” Nancy replied. 

Ozzie looked one way down the corridor, then the other. It was so quiet. And Jonathan had screamed. He swallowed hard, trying not to picture Jonathan’s lifeless body somewhere out there in the ship. “Do you think any of them are still alive?” he asked.

Nancy turned her head around—all the way around—her eyes wide. 

“That was fucking creepy.”

“Thank you.”

“No, I meant—”

“I don’t care that I don’t conform to your westernized concepts of beauty.”

Ozzie opened and shut his mouth. “Yeah. Okay. Anyway. Did you see something?”

“Yes. There are lifeforms locked in the storage bay.”

“Is it—could it be the other guys?” He and Nancy ran down the hall. The door to the storage bay was also disabled, but they could hear laughter behind it. “Guys? Guys? Is that you? Are you okay?”

“Ozzie? Holy _shit_ , dude! That was awesome!”

Ozzie was flattered. “Thanks, Jeff. Are you guys okay?”

“I almost have the door open. Help me,” Nancy ordered. She’d managed to jimmy the door ajar just an inch. With Ozzie and everyone else grabbing hold and pulling, they pried it open enough for everyone to get out. 

Before Ozzie could say anything, Kurt slapped him on the back. “My _man!_ I didn’t know you had the balls for that!”

“Yeah! Good for you! Let that freak flag fly!”

“What are you guys talking . . .” Ozzie trailed off as he looked from one alien to the other with a sinking feeling.

Jonathan was laughing. He was wiping actual tears of laughter away, in fact. “I _think_ that translator I bought you might have been faulty.”

Kurt disagreed. “Man, what are you talking about? No way. I loved it when you threatened to impregnate their corpses and lay your fuckin’ eggs in their mouths. Not that Mebes even have mouths, but it must have scared them shitless anyway.”

“Your translator was mistranslating every other word as ‘mate’ or ‘penis’ or ‘devour.’ I have no idea what you were actually saying, but it basically made it sound like you were threatening to rape a bunch of single-celled organisms and use their bodies as hosts for your parasitic children,” Walsh explained. 

“Ugh!” Ozzie pulled a face. 

“I was impressed.” Jonathan gave him an impish smile. “You really put your literary degree to good use. I might get that bit of poetry tattooed on my body somewhere.”

“I have to say, _again,_ that you really suck at finding romantic words, Walsh.” 

Jonathan wasn’t listening. “I don’t think Mebes even know what it all meant since they reproduce in a totally different way than vertebrates do, but it definitely made an impression. Especially when you set your, um, murderous sperm on them?”

“My what? Oh, the goldfish. Well, it got them moving, anyway.”

“Pshyeah. The retreated as fast as their ooze could carry them.” Jonathan smiled. “Good job, Ozzie.”

Ozzie’s face got warm. “Yeah, well. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

“We should inspect the ship,” interjected Nancy. “It is still functioning, so I would hope any damage is superficial, but it’s better to be certain.”

“I’ll scan,” said Jeff.

“I’ll get the scanner down from the shelf for you,” Kurt put in gallantly. 

As Jeff turned away, Ozzie could swear he was hiding a grin. Ozzie turned back to Jonathan. “So . . . where were we?”

Jonathan shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. “I was praising you. Why, you fishing for more? My hero,” he said with a teasing grin. 

“Not that! I meant—you know. We were talking about the . . . the _green card_ and all that.” Ozzie looked Jonathan in the eye. “And I gotta know: do you really . . . are you really . . . _are_ you in love with me?”

“Maybe,” Jonathan replied with surprising candor. His look was pure puppy-dog eyes. “I’m new to this whole ‘feelings’ business. Until recently, I wasn’t sure if I was experiencing love, or just heartburn from all the Hardee’s we’ve been eating. But . . . I really like you a lot,” he added, looking down. “Maybe you’re just a human, but you always seem to be fighting to be something so much _more_. You’re always digging and learning and . . . _challenging_ me.” He finally met Ozzie’s eyes again. “Every time I think I get how you guys work, you surprise me.”

Ozzie had to smile at that. “Thanks. I like you a lot, too.”

“You should. I’m pretty fantastic,” Jonathan said with that false bravado that he’d cultivated so carefully for so long. 

“No, really. The _real_ you. The you that tries to help people and gets confused and has messy hair and runs right into trouble because he doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt. I like that guy. Even though your idea of romantic prose is really pathetic and you’re technically a big, green, creepy lizard-monster. And maybe . . . I mean, you know this world better than I do. If you need to tell everyone I’m your submissive or whatever in order to get the Reptilians to fight for Earth, I guess I’m just gonna have to trust you.”

Jonathan picked a piece of broken pipe up off the floor and turned it over in his hands. “You don’t . . . look, Ozzie, you don’t have to worry about any of that. I’m not going to tell people you’re my doss,” he said, putting the pipe in the trash chute. 

“You’re not?”

“Naw. Honestly, that was just my ego talking. I didn’t want my dad seeing me with some . . . some backwater _Earthling_. And that’s stupid. Ozzie, I know you don’t like me the way I like you, but I honestly think you’re pretty great. And . . . I won’t be ashamed to tell my dad that you and I are partners, one hundred percent, in our, you know, totally fake marriage.”

Ozzie smiled. He looked around. “Boy, this place is a wreck.” They began to clean up in earnest, heading back down the hall toward the kitchen. As they sorted garbage, he thought for a long time. “You really want to save Earth, don’t you?” he said, watching Walsh try to figure out if the Disinfectinator had been permanently damaged. 

“Well, yeah.”

“But it’s not just because of me. I mean. Is it?”

Jonathan turned to him slowly. “No. Not _just_ you. I mean, it started with you, but . . . It’s a lot of little things. Like Lakers games. Have you ever been to a Lakers game? They’re _amazing_.” He laughed at Ozzie’s expression. “You should go sometime! It’s a blast! And—and junk food. Ozzie, there are _deep-fried Mars Bars._ And _antiques!_ I’ve seen shows! Hey, this clock is super old. It’s falling apart! No one’s _ever tried to repair it and somehow that makes it even more valuable._ Imagine deciding that something sat around long enough that it’s worth more, just—just because it’s really, really old and crappy! That is so crazy to me!” Jonathan was waving his hands around now, trying to give shape to his thoughts. 

Ozzie nodded slowly. “Yeah, we do have antiques.” Jonathan was weird and sometimes hard to figure out, but . . . he wasn’t any weirder than, say, Gerry. Hadn’t Ozzie once told Jonathan that _everyone_ was a weirdo? Maybe, when everything was weird, liking a big green lizard wasn’t actually all that weird at all. 

“You want something to drink? I have more of that liquor left. Make this whole mating thing a little more palatable? _Totally_ helps get you in the mood.”

“There’s that romantic side again,” Ozzie replied dryly.

Jonathan wasn’t paying attention. He had his back to Ozzie, going through the kitchen cabinet like he hardly even noticed the broken door and the goldfish everywhere. 

“You humans have all sorts of things I never expected. For instance, there’s this little restaurant, just down the street from me, on the first floor of this old brownstone. The same family has owned it for like a hundred years. You can literally smell the marinara in the walls, Ozzie. And this old guy comes around sometimes and plays this—this thing that you squeeze. An accordion! Ozzie, we don’t even _have_ music where I come from. Can you imagine a world without Beyonce?” Jonathan was excited, talking with his hands and making the liquor sploosh over the side of the glass. “The city counsel—they want to knock this place down. They want to put in some modern high-rise. And I—I just have to tell you, Ozzie, it’s a shame. This place—I feel like sometimes we want to tear down places and build new ones before we have time to get to know the old ones. Does that make sense? It’s really a cool place. I should take you sometime. I mean, if it hasn’t been blasted to rubble by the Cubes.” He noticed that Ozzie was just standing there in the doorway, smiling a crooked smile. “What? Do I have something in my teeth?”

“No. Your teeth are fine.” Ozzie rubbed his forehead. “It’s just _weird,_ man, hearing you be . . . like, _genuine_ about something.” 

Jonathan set his glass on one of the counters and handed Ozzie the other. He turned one of the cantina chairs upright and perched on it. “What do you say, Ozzie? Let’s just . . . get to know each other. See where things go. There’s more to me than beef collagen drinks and collapsible televisions.”

“Yeah. No, I’ve learned a lot about you lately,” Ozzie admitted. “I didn’t know you liked deep-fried junk food, for a start.” He ambled across the room and leaned back against the counter. 

Jonathan nodded hard. “And there are tons of things I don’t know about you. Things I’d like to know! I want to know your favorite color. Your favorite food. Your favorite band! I’d like to get to know you,” said Jonathan, his voice tentative. “And vice versa.”

Ozzie smiled. That . . . didn’t sound so bad. He dragged over another one of the chairs and set it next to Jonathan’s. “I could tell you about my favorite band,” he offered, taking a seat.

Jonathan lit up. “Oh, yeah? Is it Hootie and the Blowfish? I bet it is. Come on, tell me. True story; I’m tight with Darius Rucker. I can hook you up.”

“Jesus. _No,_ it is not _Hootie and the Blowfish_ ,” Ozzie replied, offended. “You really wanna do this? This . . .” Ozzie gestured wordlessly, indicating the space between Jonathan and himself. 

“Us? Yeah.” Jonathan grinned. “I mean, I know it’s _strange_ , but if a Grey and a Reptilian can find things in common, why not you and me? Unless you’re, you know, scared. I _can_ be really intimidating.”

“I’m not _scared_ , man . . . just . . . a bit overwhelmed.” 

“We could . . . take it slow,” Jonathan suggested. He scooted closer to Ozzie, bumping his arm companionably. 

That actually sounded okay to Ozzie. “On one condition,” he said. Jonathan looked at him expectantly. “No more beef-collagen wheatgrass drinks.”

“No more beef-collagen wheatgrass drinks,” Jonathan promised. His eyes sparkled. “There are loads of other foods I can torture you with past the Hub.”

Ozzie groaned.

“So come on. Tell me. What’s your favorite band?” Jonathan nudged him again. 

Grinning, Ozzie took a deep breath. He shifted his weight and tried to decide what to do with the hand near Jonathan’s arm. Should he put his arm around him? Too cheesy. Hold hands? Oh, like _that_ was less cheesy. Give him an affectionate punch in the arm? Definitely not. What about—he felt a little thrill as he turned it over in his head. Yeah, why not? He let his hand drop to Jonathan’s knee. He did _not_ look up to see Walsh’s reaction. He already _knew_ Walsh’s reaction. The dude was grinning his biggest, most insufferable grin. 

“Soooo, is this human flirting? I dig it,” Walsh teased.

“Whatever.”

“You know I know you like me, too.”

“That sentence doesn’t even make sense.”

Jonathan flicked out his tongue. “I’m just saying . . . we can _smell_ arousal, Ozzie.”

Ozzie swallowed hard, staring at nothing. Sure, squeezing Jonathan’s knee was kind of hot, but how on Earth—or off of it—was he supposed to be able to deal with Jonathan being able to tell that? It was too much like mind-reading. 

“But don’t worry,” Jonathan went on, “I’ll tell you when I’m turned on, too.” He leaned in to whisper in Ozzie’s ear, “Like right now. I’m turned on right now.”

Ozzie turned his head and kissed the man, hard. It felt good, and Jonathan’s very warm and human lips very expertly kissed back. Ozzie didn’t care if it was a mask. It was a very believable mask. 

When they pulled away, Jonathan mugged hard. “Ozzie, I’m _impressed._ You do keep on surprising me, don’t you? Oh, by the way, that also turns me on.”

Ozzie did his best not to grin and tried to ignore this. “Did you want to know about me or not?”

“Everything. I want to know _everything.”_

“Okay. Let me tell you about the best band ever. A band that never took any shit. A band with a unique sound, comprised of sirens, turntable scratches, and politcally relevant lyrics that still resonate to this day. Let me tell you about Public Enemy . . .”

Jonathan leaned over, bumping his own forehead very gently against the side of Ozzie’s head. “Good,” he murmured. “I really want to hear all about Public Enemy.”

Ozzie had to laugh. “I think that’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”


End file.
